Black Holes

    The simple wooden floor stretches out toward the mirrors on the east wall. Soft lights illuminate the space between my thumbs as I gaze down, while simultaneously pushing myself up into the upside-down V that is downward facing dog. And I breathe.

Softly in through my nose, and out of my mouth. The wheeze at the back of my throat is barely audible. 

I inhale the space between the lavender walls. I hold the air in lungs that feel stretched to capacity.  My bare toes arch up into heels that are tied to hamstrings and calf muscles that are too tight to release to the mat no matter how deeply I breathe. Bright blue toenails peek up cheerfully from the mountaintop scene depicted on my white yoga mat. 

Hugging my muscles to the bone, I am small. I have spent my life trying to be small - as small as possible. If one is successful at being small, they might even become invisible. To be invisible would be the best protection ever, except that I am also clumsy. My invisibility powers would be betrayed by my stumble over the chair, or dropping my cup, or the loud "oops" that flies out of my mouth countless times each day. However, we shall set this technicality aside in favor of my theory that smallness leads to invisibility which leads to safety. 

Safety from the yelling, the angry conversations, the unavoidable conflicts. If I am small enough, maybe no one will notice me. And if no one notices me, they can hardly be mad - right? 

Sometimes when I am actively practicing being small, I think of black holes. Technically some black holes are teeny tiny. According to NASA, the smallest black holes are as small as one atom. Apparently, there are huge black holes too, but for the purpose of this metaphor, please hang tight with me and the small black holes. The big ones have a job too, this just isn't it. Although the smallest black holes are itty bitty, they are packed with mass. (I don't understand how something can be small and massive at the same time, but people smarter than me say this is true about space. I think this is true about people too).

To be small - the small I aspire to be, I must be one atom. To become this, I cannibalize myself through a series of crushing, diminishing mental conversations where I fold upon myself over and over again - pressing into the tiny corners of my black hole - If I can curl up just a little bit more, maybe - just maybe, I will fit. 

Compressing my everything into this atom creates a great deal of pressure - sort of like the mass described in the tiny atom-sized black hole. I fold and fold, and fold. The heat builds in my chest and tears through my ribs and up my throat in gasps and chokes. I am burning from the inside - collapsing a thousand times to collapse again.

Stellar black holes are caused when a star falls upon itself. Gravity pulls the light out of the star into the hole disappearing into a vortex, pulling everything it can find into itself to absorb until it can hold no more, and it explodes. I imagine starlight shattering across the universe in glitter bombs of gold. Crossing space and time. Landing in tiny fragments of dust on faraway planets, scarring landscapes, and burning their way through lifetimes.

I am practicing holding the flames inside. Exhaling my poisonous vapor onto the mirror of the room, fogging my vision, leaving no trace forward, turning ever inward to my spiraling center of doom. I am a star collapsed upon myself, my light sucked from my soul in eternal heartbreak.